Customer Reviews

Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Rawn Shah's book, Social Networks for Business, is a top down technical view on implementing social media. He provides a view of social networking that will appeal to IT professionals as it is based on a premise that social networking is a technology that should be structured and controlled at the center like other technologies. While this is possible, the advice Shah offers is based on the fundamentals that if you build it right, manage it right, then they will come.

That logic is simple but it assumes that business professionals are users of the technology rather than creators of the solutions that operate on a social network. That last piece is important as those following the advice in this book bear a high probability of simply recreating existing low value low activity intranet portals and knowledge bases in new social networking clothing.

A warning that this is a rather lengthy review in order to explain why I see the book as technically correct but not enough to address the issues fully. Shah is not wrong, its rather he is narrow in the ability to his advice to work beyond his experience and he is looking at the issue with an established techno-management lens that does not capture the potential of these new technologies. Perhaps no book can capture it all, in which case this becomes part of a social media library and body of study.

That has been my observation at more than two dozen companies I have met all of whom have the same question "We, meaning IT, have built a social network with all the bells and whistles but no one wants to use it." The reason behind the low use is in the question itself. Social networks are not built and provided by one party for others to use. Social networks are not software in the traditional sense, but generative technologies that require engaging the business in their creation of the applications that matter.

My intent in this review is not to degrade Shah's work. The book is first rate, complete, well written and very thoughtful. Its just that Shah's application of traditional heavy weight IT management principles do not consider the idea that the business, not IT builds the solutions. This is understandable as the author comes from IBM and the advice he provides reflects their unique sales/engineering culture that looks for structure and unfortunately is unique to Big Blue. There is nothing wrong with IBM, the same way that there is nothing wrong with the advice in this book.

Readers need to be aware that this book treats social networking as a management and technical issue. A view that I have observed is incomplete at best and detrimental to the enterprise efforts to gain the collaboration, knowledge sharing and flexibility needed to compete in this environment.

Shah recognizes this issue, devoting five of the ten chapters to issues related to the social system. Unfortunately here he takes a technical management view defining the roles, governance and structures required to set up a central management of the network. The work is good and complete down to salary ranges for community managers and their assigned work tasks. I can see this working in a highly structured culture where people look for the right way to contribute before making a contribution. The issue with gaining value from social networking is not that they do not have enough management; it is more like they do not have enough emphasis on the social systems. In this regard I like Seth Godin's notion of mavens as a lightweight structure to make the social systems work.

Strengths:

* Comprehensive in addressing the management and technical issues involved in implementing social networks in a modern top down corporation

* Strong focus on defining terms and laying out the taxonomy of social networking

* Chapter 10 the last chapter's first few pages summarizes a strong definition of social media and networking. It should have appeared in the first chapter as it sets a good context for the book

* Proves technical and operational management best practices for those technologies

* Clearly written and focused as it delivers a significant amount of information in 162 pages.

Challenges

* The absence of examples is regrettable, as we need to see how these practices work in reality rather than being described in the abstract. Changing social relationships is always contextually heavy and some examples would have gone a long way to addressing the points mentioned earlier.

* The book does not address business issues that can be addressed by social networking. The focus of the social networking solutions implied by the book is in terms of people using wiki's, blogs and the like rather tan what the business uses the tools to accomplish.

* The view of social networking as fundamentally a technical and central management issue. This is despite the fact that Shah offers models that are not based on central control like the starfish model. Unfortunately as he goes to illustrate potential applications the management structure turns out to be centralized more often than not (Chapter 5).

* The book outlines solutions that are dependent on the authors experience within IBM and that colors the recommendations and views. IBM is mentioned sporadically throughout the book and while they have accomplished a lot using social networking, the book is a little too IBM centric to be viewed as an entirely independent analysis of what works in the market place. This does not make what Shah writes wrong - it just makes it narrow in is potential application.

* Social behavior is assumed to come from management structures rather than the motivation and interest of people. This gives the reader the feeling that a top down approach, driven by sponsors can tacitly coerce collaboration out of a corporation.

Shah's book brings a technical set of practices that compliment McAfee's business-social definitions in his book Enterprise 2.0. This is a good thing and readers will find value. However they must recognize the limitations and implied mental models found in the book.

I need structure for social networking and this book does a good job of describing structure. However, you need the right social systems first as no amount of structure will overcome weak social dynamics and create value.

Have you ever read a textbook that was almost impossible to follow? That's what it's like trying to read "Social Networking For Business." The information may very well be excellent. I wouldn't know; I couldn't stay awake long enough to find out.

I picked a sentence at random so you can see what I mean: "However, you can still fit this aggregate behavioral information into the context of a given framework by separating commitment into distinct threshhold levels and watching for markers of certain types of actions that fit profiles of behavior for each level."

Just a few minutes of reading this kind of thing will put you right to sleep.

I recommend the authors read Rudolf Flesch's book, "How to Write, Speak, & Think More Effectively," apply the principles of readability, and try again.

I am interested in social networking, and its possibilities in business. My friends and I spend a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites, so it makes sense to use all of this to the benefit my businesses. My first "business" is working for a private school that is always looking for ways to increase enrollment and obtain funding. My second business is a small communications company that operates various informational websites. I was hoping to find a book that offered practical, easy-to-understand, and proven ways for businesses to use social networking. Unfortunately, I found this book to be very academic, technical, and not very user-friendly. While I am used to reading academic literature, I didn't intend to buy a book that reads like a dissertation on social networking.

First, let me highlight some of the positives. This book is very thorough, and is filled with tables full of information about various types of social networking, and ways a business can use the Internet. Shah provides detailed information on the benefits of using social networking to address common business problems (e.g. group-think, lack of real collaboration, etc). This book makes a strong case for using social networking to facilitate better communication among employees, encourage "out-of-the-box" thinking, and involve customers and partners in decision making and project development. Using social networking in this fashion saves the company money, and contributes to a company's creative capital. I also found his real-world examples helpful. Thus, there are many good points and ideas contained within this book.

Now, let me express the things I didn't like. The treatment of the topic is so thorough and academic that he lost my interest. For someone in my situation, this book was overkill. It seems as if there are headings, subheadings, and then even more subheadings below that! If I had the time to process it all, or was involved in a business big enough to thoroughly explore every facet of social-networking, this book would be great. I just don't really need to know the six social government models, or the five "markers of commitment levels" (comfort with online tools, doing the minimum, participating and learning, relating and belonging, seeking recognition, and altruism...just so you know!). Even the examples he gives that I am familiar with and use, such as a popular blogging website, are often buried in sections like "Ecosystems," where I learned that said blogging site is a "homogeneous ecosystem," while IBM is an example of a "heterogeneous ecosystem." While I understand his point, I am not really that interested in the detailed theories related to a blogging site. Unfortunately, this is the only instance that the very successful site is mentioned in the entire book!

Overall, this book may be helpful for some people, who are very interested in social-networking, or who are involved in a business that is big enough to deeply explore the benefits of social-networking. This is why I gave the book three stars; Shah knows his stuff, and I am convinced someone will benefit from it. However, that "someone" is not me. I would have preferred a more concise and practical book, filled with simple and concrete steps businesses can take to use social-networking for their benefit.

I love social networking tools. I am continuously logged into Facabook, and I use Twitter more or less regularly to promote some of my professional websites. I thought that a book on social networking for business would help me use these tools more effectively, and perhaps improve the visibility and accessibility of my professional websites. However, from the information that I've gathered about this book it seems to be geared more towards large businesses which want to utilize social networking tools to manage their personnel and projects. Or so I assume based on the author's background as some sort of social networking guru at IBM. The fact is, this book is so atrociously badly written that I will never know for sure. Poor choice of words, awkward phrasing, sentences in different paragraphs that allude to each other are just some of the problems with writing that I encountered already on the first couple of pages. I found myself reading and rereading several passages in order to understand what was going on. I can't believe that a reputable publishing house would publish something like this. This book is in a need of a LOT of editing, but I fear that even with some heroic editing effort it still might be unsalvageable.

I feel it was a mistake for Amazon to send me this book to review - I'm a novice in social networking, and so I was looking more for an introduction to the subject.

This book by Rawn Shah (IBM) is a fairly technical manual on how to choose, implement, manage, and structure the various social networks in your IT infrastructure. It is not about branding, marketing, or the content of the message - there are already a ton of books on those subjects, and this book focuses more on technical implementation.

I believe this book is receiving some fairly harsh reviews from people like myself, for whom it looks like a textbook. Having said that, I hope I steer you away from this book if you're more like me (a "Dummies Guide" kind of guy on this subject), and if you're an IT professional please don't be too discouraged by the negative reviews.

I had a casual interest in social networking, this book provided me with the opportunity to dive into the world of social networking. While I didn't find anything ground-breaking it served its purpose as an introductory book. The book is fairly academic in its approach, it does contain valuable insights which the reader can immediately utilize in the real world. It was not an easy read and it was not captivating. If you are interested in finding out what social networking can do for your business, it is not a bad starting point.

Although most organizations use email and web access, corporate users are looking for better ways to organize their enterprise data, manage their business relationships, communicate detailed content, and discover new information, customers and the expertise to guide them, according to Rawn Shah in this book. Increasingly, social computing is reshaping the process of organizational decision making.

Although the book mentions a number of social computing tools, it concentrates on the broad principles rather than the specifics. Chapter 3 contains an interesting discussion of different leadership models which can apply in a social computing environment, ranging from a centralized model through to an essentially leaderless swarm model. Other chapters discuss collaboration, creating and managing information, social ecosystems and culture, members and community management, and different types of metrics that can be used.

So, how specifically can a business choose the right tools and resources to fit the social networking needs of its operating environment? After reading the book, I am not sure I am any closer to finding answers to those questions. I was expecting to read descriptions of a number of different social networking tools and the advantages and disadvantages of using each in a business environment, but the book was more about general theoretical principles of managing a social networking ecosystem.

Rawn's newest book exposes not just the existence of a variety of social experience models, but the direct connection to *business value* surrounded with examples and frameworks to identify the business opportunities and potential dangers.

Truly a rarity in a market filled with light-weight 'consumer-only' analysis of the social world.

If you're looking for "Social Networking for Dummies" - this is not the book for you. If you are looking for something with a bit more weight to it - that can help you provide a framework to address social networking, then you have you found the right book.

When you ask most folks what Social Media is they'll say Facebook or Twitter.... Ask them how to use it for business purposes and more than likely you'll get a blank stare. I was curious what Mr. Shah's take on using social media for business was, thinking it would give insight and real world examples of this.

This book isn't that at all. It reads like a technical manual, that dissects the technology and structure behind social programing, with very little in the way of how social media is being used by businesses to succeed in an evermore technological economy.

Don't get my wrong, Mr. Shah knows his stuff, but this book is more like a text book used in college, in that it abstracts social media.

Mr. Shah is right in pointing out the social media is evolving and here to stay. The more you know about it, and the more you understand it, the better.

This book can help in that realm, it that it spends a great deal of time analyzing the various structures encompassed by social media, the various roles of their members, and their life cycles.

The more insight the better, and you get that here, just in a technical fashion, which makes it a bit of a tedious read.

I picked up this book based off the title when I should have read the details. With a title like Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs my guess was the book was focused on business networking, making connections, finding a new career, using sites like Linked In, Facebook, etc., to help with meeting people in your field and making business contacts.

After starting the book I soon realized I was way off and the author was writing in an academic style, creating terms and definitions based off his own experiences, and using statistical and other data to help a user design, create, manage, and deliver a social networking portal from the ground up.

Honestly, even in this context the author soon lost my interest. Why invest in technical infrastructure, hire staff, buy software tools, and try to chase something that already exists in multiple contexts? Any specific business most likely has an existing web site with downloads, current information, maybe a board, and these existing web based tools and presence will account for most of the needs of people visiting. If you try to create a 'social networking,' website based off a company or business and expect to compete against Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or other existing social networking websites you may as well just flush the cash down the toilet. Nothing like creating something from the ground up and end up with a few dozen users that even bother to register and nobody who is really active.

There is a reason most companies use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or other sites and create a profile there. It's FREE or minimal cost. There are already millions and millions of users and accounts on the sites. People interested in your company, product, or service can easily find you. It accomplishes the same goals as creating your own site, but without the costs, overhead, deliverable timeline, etc.

From my perspective this book is a failure on many levels and complicates things vs., providing a better solution.